T-Mobile is at the center of the DOJ’s allegations against Huawei

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An indictment unsealed on Jan 28 claims that telecommunication equipment vendor Huawei stole trade secrets from Bellevue (WA)-based T-Mobile USA and then obstructed justice when T-Mobile threatened to sue Huawei in US District Court in Seattle. According to the indictment, in 2012 Huawei began a concerted effort to steal information on a T-Mobile phone-testing robot dubbed “Tappy.” In an effort to build their own robot to test phones before they were shipped to T-Mobile and other wireless carriers, Huawei engineers allegedly violated confidentiality and nondisclosure agreements with T-Mobile by secretly taking photos of “Tappy,” taking measurements of parts of the robot, and in one instance stealing a piece of the robot so that the Huawei engineers in China could try to replicate it. The indictment also claims that after T-Mobile discovered and interrupted these activities and then sued in 2014, Huawei produced a report falsely claiming that the theft was the work of rogue actors within the company and not a concerted effort by Huawei. The indictment says that emails obtained in the course of the investigation reveal the conspiracy to steal secrets from T-Mobile was a companywide effort involving many engineers and employees. As part of the investigation into Huawei, the FBI says it obtained emails revealing that in July 2013, Huawei offered bonuses to employees based on the value of information they stole from companies around the world.


T-Mobile is at the center of the DOJ’s allegations against Huawei